Dark Sun of Desire
by Mark of the Asphodel
Summary: History records that Nyna, Queen of Archanea, abdicated her throne in the year 609 and vanished from the continent. As to what befell her next, we can only speculate. This is one such speculation. Archanea/Valencia crossover, verges on darkfic.
1. Failed Queen

**Dark Sun of Desire**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warning: This is a crossover between FE3/11 (the Marth games) and FE2, which is canonically a sidestory to the Marth games and takes place on a neighboring continent. This story covers the post-war lives of some of the characters from the continents of Archanea and Valencia, and it focuses on Queen Nyna of Archanea. It is dark, not meant for young readers in the slightest, will be rated T verging on M, and contains many, many spoilers for the games. Consider yourself warned! I will not warn for any of the **canon** pairings but will warn for pairings not blessed by canon.

This is written in a non-linear but not entirely random fashion. In other words, the scenes alternate between Nyna's past and her present.

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_Part One: Failed Queen_

She turned her head to cry out, and as her cheek brushed against the taut canvas she felt the wetness of her own saliva. There was no strength in her voice and so the cry came out as a tremulous moan. She heard the quick footsteps of her servant and wondered yet again that Timur could be so sure-footed on this storm-tossed ship.

"Mistress Niena, do you need the basin?"

"No," she whispered, and closed her eyes. They said that if one kept one's eyes focused on a point, the sickness would lessen, but they were wrong. The sickness gripped her whether she opened her eyes or closed them, whether Timur walked her along the deck in the salt air or she lay, limp as a corpse, upon this rude bed.

"Do you want me to sing, Mistress Niena?"

"No, Timur. You sing beautifully, but my head aches so...." She sounded like a drunk, each word slurring into the next. "How many days has it been, Timur?"

"Thirty-two," the boy said. Thirty-two days, when the journey was supposed to be only a month.

"Are we within sight of land?" She dreaded the answer.

"No, mistress. The captain has not even seen shore birds yet."

She had the impulse to stand, then, to totter above-decks and stare at the unyielding horizon with her own eyes, but as she raised her head another fit of nausea crashed over her, like the very waves that pummeled the _Swiftsure_. Nyna tried to mouth a prayer for relief and mercy, but what spilled from her mouth was a bubble of green bile-- thin and watery, for there was no food left in her stomach. Once Timur had cleaned her up, she smiled at him rather than try to thank him with words and bring on another episode.

Timur promised the healer would come soon, but one of the cabin boys had taken a fall and needed his shoulder set, and....

And Mistress Niena and her sea-sickness had taken up an inordinate amount of the good healer's time. Mistress Niena was enough of a burden to the crew of the _Swiftsure _that they all rather wished she'd yield up her miserable soul and spare them any more concern. Timur offered a charmingly lopsided smile and shrugged in the expressive way of his people.

"If the gods are willing, the seas will calm soon," he concluded.

The gods were not willing. Nyna lay on her aching stomach with her face dangled over the side of her cot. She almost prayed for death, if death would end this terrible sickness, but she knew that if she died here, in the ocean between the land of her birth and the western island, she would pass out of life with nothing to her credit. They would wrap her in a winding-sheet and lower her from the ship without ceremony; she would slip into the water and so be washed from the pages of history-- no name, no marker, no legacy.

If she died now, she would be failing him one more time, one last inexcusable time. She would be failing them all.

-X-

Nyna's world was fragmented, as the reflection of a shattered mirror. Eyes in faces, sounds that issued from mouths, the arc of a weapon and the damage it caused-- all these registered as separate experiences. Only one thing, one person, served as her tether in the confusion of the Dragon's Altar, and she lost him. Nyna ran through the shadows and the bursts of light, seeking her savior. She kept running long after most of the shapes around her had fallen still.

"Nyna!" The voice resonated in her memory, the hand on her arm restrained her gently, but when she looked up at the young man she saw a tumble of dark hair, and her heart sank.

"Careful, Nyna. This place is filled with many unknown dangers."

"Camus is not dead, Marth. I saw him. Where has he...."

But he held up a finger to silence her. Nyna looked at his hand, at the dark blood that ran between his fingers and soaked the backs of his gloves, and was quiet.

"The man you saw is called Sirius. He came across the seas, from the west."

"No." The world around her now was changing; the sharp and disconnected images melded together, as though she peered through a smeared glass. The frantic energy inside her began to drain away, and she realized she needed to sleep. She did not know, truly, when she had last slept at all.

"Empress Nyna." He spoke cautiously, as though he did not fully expect her to understand. "Someone who loved you greatly asked me to take care of you."

"I have to find Camus, Marth. I know it was Camus."

"Please, Nyna. It's time to go home."

His voice seemed to come from high above her, and she wondered if he had always been that tall. He had changed, she thought. Everything had changed.

"I don't know where that is," she said, staring over his shoulder, searching for a glimpse of waving yellow hair, the flash of a silver mask.

Marth's hands closed around hers, and she saw her pale fingers between his stained ones. Nyna bowed her head and allowed him to lead her away.

-X-

The forty-first day of their voyage found the _Swiftsure_ moored in heavy swells off the coast of the western land. Some hilltop bandit ruled that coast, the captain said, and he was taking his sweet pleasure in granting them permission to come ashore.

She lay on her cot, attended now not by Timur but by the healer, the captain's elder sister. Nyna watched with indifference as Madam Hilde wrapped a bundle of blood-soaked rags. Hilde dropped the bundle into a bucket where it landed with a dull heavy sound; Nyna wondered if they would burn the rags or simply pitch them over the side, into the turbulent sea.

"The bleeding is less today, but should it continue at this strength tomorrow, you are in a great deal of trouble."

Nyna blinked; she was unused to this degree of honesty in a healer. A queen, a princess, would never hear that she was incurably ill, that she'd sustained a mortal wound or been deprived forever of her senses. She was always to be granted hope, would be given reassurance until the last breath escaped her. The healers understood that they must lie, and the princesses generally understood it to be a lie, and so the disagreeable fiction continued through the centuries.

"Are you fleeing a bad marriage, lady?" Hilde must have read dismay in Nyna's face, for she added, "You had the ghost of a ring around your finger when you joined us."

Nyna examined both of her hands-- poor shrunken things they seemed now, with little of the beauty they'd possessed in her girlhood. If the trace of her wedding ring still lay upon her hand, she could not see it.

"Yes," she said, and let her hands fall back at her sides.

"'Tis a pity. So many of our good men have died, and only the dregs remain."

It was true, and it was not, and Nyna didn't particularly care. Her head was already spinning from loss of blood and the ship's constant motion, but Hilde gave her wine with something bitter in it that made her head spin still more, until she tumbled into a dreamless darkness.

-X-

Marth kept her close to his side thereafter. Nyna saw the pale young woman who gazed after them like a forlorn shade and asked why Marth did not instead spend his time with his betrothed, who had chanced so much and followed him so faithfully.

"I promised to take care of you," was all he would say.

On Nyna's return to her capital, she was placed upon a white horse and taken through the streets to prove to the citizens that she was alive and sound. As Nyna followed Marth through the shattered city, she felt it less of a victory parade than an echo of the processions of centuries past, when the queens of conquered barbarian tribes would displayed in public as spoils of war. She tried to superimpose the Pales of her youth-- the Holy City, the city eternal, seat of law and culture for six unbroken centuries-- over the scenes around her, but could not. The layout of the avenues was the same, even the most damaged of the buildings was recognizable for what it had been, but something of the spirit of Pales was gone, perhaps irretrievably so. Nyna saw it in the men and women who had been her people. Some cheered for her, some for him, but many-- so many-- of the upturned faces looked on in a sullen, wary silence.

She brought her horse alongside his and spoke to him without moving her lips.

"Why is there so little love for you?"

He continued to look ahead, continued to raise a hand to the crowd as he responded.

"They believe I started this war."

"Why would anyone do such a thing?"

"Lust of land, desire for power. The unholy joy of spilling men's blood, perhaps." He had been so relentlessly solemn of late that the tinge of familiar sarcasm was unexpectedly touching, and she would have smiled if not for his next words. "Some might say, for you."

"That's madness." It was all she could say, even as the relentless paces of his horse left her behind.

"Many will assume it, given the outcome." He did not glance at her even once as he spoke. "Your husband is dead. I killed him. I have your city and I have you. What else does any man need?"

This time, she was not even tempted to smile at his sarcasm.

-X-

After so long below decks, the light briefly blinded her. Nyna pulled her shawl down over her eyes and peered through its weave at the coast of Valencia. The colors were so rich she felt that she could taste them; she drew in long breaths of air enriched by salt and earth and unfamiliar flowers. The sky was deep and cloudless blue, the waters a bright-blue green etched with patterns of light. The coastline was jutting red rocks and yellow sand, so different from the muted grays and browns of Archanean granite. Clusters of brightly feathered birds-- green and gold and scarlet-- hung upside down from the trees like chattering fruit.

"Mistress Niena, the captain has a boat ready for us."

"Tell him I will be a moment, Timur." She closed her eyes and allowed the patterns of sunlight to play over her face. The sun was merciless here, she thought; already perspiration trickled down from beneath her shawl. "I have not enjoyed myself much of late, and I wish to do so a few moments longer."

"It is good to see you smile again, lady," he said, with a charming lack of guile. "It has been too long."

"I think I will smile often here," she said. "This world is new."

-X-

Nyna ruled over the lands of the dead, for Millennium Court was a catacomb, a darkened maze of ghosts. It was not the place where she had been her father's daughter, not the place where she had been the people's princess, their sole hope for the future. It was not even the place where she had been first Hardin's wife and then his prisoner. She was a specter holding court with memories, queen of twittering shades. The grandeur of "empress" was buried with Hardin; she was Queen Nyna, the true daughter of Archanea. And yet, she was not.

As Nyna stood at the bier of the man who had been her teacher, confessor, and confidant, she did not cry. As she stood at the tomb of the man who had briefly shared her throne, she felt no sorrow, only a hollow ache that longed to be filled by something. Nyna tried to fill it any way she could-- she took off her slippers and raced barefoot through the corridors, in a way she never had, not even as a child. She drank one night until she was sick, just to see what would happen. She sprawled out in the courtyard, weaving for herself a crown of flowers. It was here that Marth found her, at an hour when she should have been in council.

"It is said that Queen Nyna has changed, that she may not be the same woman who was taken to the Dragon's Altar by the rogue bishops." His voice carried no shading of scorn or blame; his eyes, fringed by those arresting dark lashes that had briefly caught her fancy, gave nothing away. "It is whispered that the queen may be mad."

"I am not mad, Marth." She sat up, her crown of poppy-blossoms drooping into one eye. Nyna looked down at the spatters of poppy sap on her gown and her arms; they resembled streaks of drying blood. As she stood, she realized how ridiculous her position was. "I should leave."

"Yes, I think you probably ought to."

He regarded her with the gaze of one who knew too much about her-- he seemed to look through her now, past the soiled gown and tangled hair, rather than at her. She wondered what he truly saw there.

"You must hate me."

"I don't." The denial sounded to her more harsh than an affirmation could have been. He tilted his head, and for a moment he looked as young as he'd been when first they'd met. "I don't know if I could have loved you."

Nyna touched a fingertip to her tongue; the taste of the poppies was bitter, as bitter as poison. She wondered how much she would have to drink to forget herself completely.

"He loved you, you realize."

She looked at him without comprehension for a moment.

"Sirius?"

He recoiled from her. His eyes, she thought, seemed as dark as the ocean.

"Your late husband, _Your Majesty_," he replied. "Loved you beyond all reason, apparently."

She wondered what it would take now to genuinely anger him. She could goad him to the edge, but he never crossed it. She closed her sticky hands around his wrist.

"I am sorry." The words were true yet wholly inadequate. "I will go away and never trouble you again. Once you are free of me, you can be with your Caeda and be happy."

He stepped back, wrenching out of her grasp.

"For the love of all the saints, Nyna, do you truly not understand?"

"I understand that the gods have damned me and exalted you, for no reason other than some accident of our births. I understand that I'm more happy in my damnation than I ever was as the hope of our people."

"Is that all you've learned?"

"I've learned Camus is alive."

He bowed his head, the very same way the poppies bowed before the winds and the rain.

"He is not free, Nyna. He is not the Camus you remember... any more than you are the Nyna _I_ remember."

"I must leave," she repeated. The feel of the warm summer air rushing around her was really quite pleasant. She almost felt at though she might spread her arms in place of wings and fly across the seas.

"I knew you would," he whispered. "It doesn't make it any easier for me."

"Did you ever truly need me?" She asked because she was genuinely curious, because she _did_, in a sense, want to know whatever it was he found necessary when he had lost most things and denied himself the rest.

"Perhaps I needed something to believe in, something beyond myself. I do know that I believed in Hardin... and I believed in you."

"I am sorry," she repeated. "But you don't need us now. I don't know that you need anyone."

They stood only steps apart, but there was a barrier between them, invisible but altogether real. She held out her coronet of poppies for him to take, and he turned his back on her.

-X-

She stumbled upon leaving the small boat that carried them to shore; Nyna heard both Timur and one of the sailors shout as she toppled forward. But Nyna had, in her wanderings, learned now to fall without injuring herself. She righted herself, clutching part of Valencia in both her hands.

"Are you hurt, mistress?"

"No, Timur, I am fine." The golden sand streamed down her wrists and into her sleeves. It was hot, and she imagined rivulets of fire in her hands. She wondered briefly if she could still perform magic in this land. It had been so long since she had heard the call of thunder. "The gods have taken everything else from me, but now they give me this."

She held out the fistfuls of sand to Timur, and he watched her with large eyes, uncertain if this was some joke he might share with his mistress. After a moment, the corners of his mouth quirked up.

"We are home, Timur."

**To Be Continued....**

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**Author's Notes: Queen Nyna abdicates the throne after the "War of Heroes," aka Book Two of FE3. Given that one massive war was fought in part to restore her to the throne, and another war was caused by her husband Hardin after their marriage fell apart, Nyna's decision to skip town and go chasing after her lost love General Camus (which is implied but not stated directly) has always troubled me. For those of you wondering what the heck is going on, a recap of canon: after the War of Darkness (covered in FE11), Nyna was given the choice to marry either Prince Marth of Altea or Lord Hardin of Aurelis. She went for Hardin because Marth already had a girlfriend. This turned out to be a bad move, because Hardin was passionately in love with Nyna and she did NOT feel the same about him. Hardin snapped and decided to take all his frustrations out on Marth, which ended up in a continent-consuming war and Hardin's own death. As for General Camus... it turns out he wasn't quite as dead as everyone believed. In fact, he'd turned into quite the International Man of Mystery by this stage in history....


	2. A Shadow On Every Life

**Dark Sun of Desire**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warning: This installment contains a non-canon pairing, specifically Marth/Nyna. If you don't care for that... well, they don't much care for it either.

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_Part Two: A Shadow On Every Life_

The first man of Valencia she spoke to upon the shore was a youth- only sixteen or seventeen- with long untidy hair and a crude iron sword. He peered at her through matted bangs as she questioned him.

"Is this the land of King Alm and Queen Cellica?"

"This is Jesse's land." It took her a moment to untangle the words, but the tongue of Valencia sounded only a little more foreign than the dialects of Macedon. "The Holy King and his lady live beyond the desert."

She stared at him as the words registered in her heart, and for the first time Nyna sensed that her search would not, perhaps, be so easy.

"Have you ever heard of a man named Sirius?"

"Can't say that I have."

A small continent was a continent all the same. There could be ten million people upon the isle of Valencia. Even if there were but ten thousand... if she met ten men a day, it would take her three years to encounter them all.

Nyna thrust a small pouch of gold at the raggedy youth. She could hear Timur make a small exclamation of dismay at the expense.

"Take me to Jesse."

"Yes'm."

The air shimmered with the heat as she trailed this boy along the desert road. Timur followed, as faithful and silent as the shadow cast by the parasol he held above her. Only once did he speak.

"Careful, mistress. This path is lined with the bones of strange creatures."

Nyna let her momentum continue to carry her forward. She did not look down.

-x-

Once Marth confessed to her the obvious truth, that the masked knight known as "Sirius" was truly Camus, she sank her nails into his hand and vowed to not let go until he satisfied the questions that seared her heart.

"How does he live? Did some magic bring him back from the world beyond?"

They had not let her see his body after the battle; rather, those in charge of clearing the field assumed that the princess would not _want_ to see the bloodied corpse of the man who had slain her father. Except, perhaps, as a trophy. But she had expressly forbidden her army to take any more trophies and had made them dispose of the enemy dead as they would their own people, so even the commander of the Sable Knights was laid to rest with dignity and honor. So they told her at the time.

"I've no idea," Marth replied. "Your knight has ever specialized in puzzling games, in case that's escaped you. It's another of his mysteries."

"How can you _not_ know? How could you be so dull as to not even ask?" She looked at the crescent-shaped marks she'd cut into his hands and wished she'd cut deep enough to make them bleed.

"When a man you believe to be dead at your hands comes back from the grave to lend you his aid, you don't have the right to ask many questions."

"I would think you have a perfect right to it," she argued. "You bore the grief and guilt over the death of a man who wasn't dead. He owed you the account of his miraculous survival."

Of course, she was also arguing that _she_ was owed a truth that hadn't been offered to her, and they both knew it. Camus owed it to her to repay her for the tears she'd cried for him, for the guilt she'd carried over him these past few years.

But Marth had asked no questions, or at least far too few, and so he held no answers for her. She would have struck him for his obstinacy, but deep down Nyna feared the repercussions of doing so. The gods were not kind to those who stood against their favorite, and plainly the gods had no favor for her.

-x-

"King" Jesse of the Valencian desert proved a cordial host, though his idea of kingship made Nyna smile. Jesse and his band of young men were, to her, akin to children playing at knights and squires. Each man had his impressive title, and they spoke to one another with code phrases and made gestures that carried some occult meaning, and it all was highly entertaining.

"Course I know Lady Cellica," said Jesse. "Fine lady- got me out of a tight spot a couple of years back. Me and Kamui and Saber here all fought with her... and Jenny, too."

Nyna glanced at Jenny, who seemed to be some manner of cleric. A demure-looking girl, she appeared a strange match for the one-eyed man- either Kamui or Saber, though Nyna wasn't sure which- who was apparently her husband.

"I've known Lady Cellica for more than half my life," said Jenny, and her speech was so different from the rough tongue of Jesse and his mercenaries that Nyna felt the urge to connect with this girl. "She is the kindest person imaginable. If you need some assistance from her, I'm sure she will do her best to help you. But, Mistress Niena- if I may ask, why have you come all the way from Archanea to seek out the Holy Queen?"

"A knight of your country named Sirius gave aid to me when my own land was at war. I wish to find this knight and thank him."

Nyna saw at once the raised eyebrows and downturned mouths of Jenny and the men.

"Don' remember anyone named Sirius," said Saber-or-Kamui.

"No," added Jenny. "I cannot recall any knight by that name. Though we never did get to know all the soldiers from Rigel... perhaps your Sirius would be among them."

At the evening's end, Nyna had at least gleaned a fair amount of information regarding Queen Cellica from her hosts. Jenny proved especially helpful; Nyna's gratitude to the girl for the information almost made up for the envy she felt each time Jenny's hand slipped into the sword-callused hand of her husband.

-x-

Nyna's second wedding was the opposite of her first. With Hardin, she recited her vows on the sacred grounds of the Great Temple, spoke the false words before a throng of her subjects, from the great nobles and bishops to the barefooted war orphans. This time the the vows took place within the high walls of Millennium Court, in the chapel draped with mourning banners. For witnesses, she had the bare minimum required by law and custom to make legal this ceremony as the last descendant of the line of King Adrah surrendered herself and her divine authority. Nyna expected the gods themselves to look on this moment, but she could not feel them; she heard not the faintest roll of thunder, no whisper of the healing spirits.

When the lies of love and obedience unto death were over, and this sham of a marriage sealed with a cold, dry kiss, Nyna saw no joy in any face- just relief, resignation, or a mixture of both. Marth showed no emotion at all as he took her hand and led her from the chapel. Neither musicians, nor singers, nor merrymakers of any kind accompanied them to the bedchamber, and in short time they were alone- save for the innumerable ghosts that hung around them always. Nyna sat on the edge of the ancient bed, looking at the new ring that adorned her hand. She wondered if Marth would give it to Caeda once he'd taken it back from her. Perhaps she ought to take it with her and fling it into the depths of the sea.

"We don't have to do this. I could simply cut my finger and smear a bit of it on the bloodsheets."

"Must you profane everything?" He looked beautiful in white; it suited him the way that black suited Camus.

"It's my destiny. You know that I was born the day of an eclipse?" He nodded, and though she was certain he'd heard the story, she told it all as she knew it. "The face of the moon did blot out the sun, and the sun became a black disc streaming fire in a darkened sky that showed the stars of the wrong season. People thought the world might be ending, and then the crisis passed and they learned the Queen of Archanea had merely given them all a daughter instead of a son. They rejoiced then, believing disaster to be averted. They didn't realize that I was the disaster. They didn't realize that I was fated forever to be one dancer in three, circling one another endlessly until the skies turn black."

"The sun and the moon are eclipsed on a regular basis, and the scholars know the dates well in advance," he said. Posed rigidly in a chair across the room from her, he might have been some high master of Khadein delivering a lecture. "Children are born on every one of these dates, and most pass their lives without any ill consequence to mankind."

"Who are you to disregard omens in the sky, my Prince of Light? You, the one they call the Lord of the Stars."

"Nothing at all remarkable happened the day I was born. No eclipses, no comets, no rains of blood or showers of frogs. There was a little spring rain and a few hours of sun, and my mother's favorite flowers were spattered by mud and her servants had to wash the petals before bringing them up to her room."

He spoke so calmly of these everyday details, small fragments of a world that had been broken, violated, and scattered to the winds. Nyna spent a moment mulling over the fact that, once upon a time queens could concern themselves with whether or not their servants had _washed off the flowers_ presented to them. It could never have crossed the mind of Liza, third queen consort of Altea, that the child she bore between sun-showers would inherit all the continent. Would she have been glad or sorry?

"I wonder what you would have been in a time of peace."

"I'd have likely married the younger princess of Macedon and spent my days reading books and imagining ways to get a better yield from the earth."

The set of his shoulders had relaxed, and as he flicked a strand of hair from his eyes Nyna realized that Marth was comfortable around her in a way he once had been, in a way he _hadn't_ been since he'd brought her back from the Dragon's Altar. The last time she'd contemplated marrying him- before she'd taken Hardin instead- Nyna had thought that she and Marth would at least have things to talk about. Little things, silly things. Nyna stared at the geometric patterns of the wall opposite her, and imagined the labyrinth design to be the maze of her life. So many paths blocked off. So many dead ends.

She and Marth might have had so many things to talk about, had they not been out of time.

"Take me home," she said, using the very words that Hardin's jealous imagination had twisted from a sincere wish into a carnal plea.

"Home? You have no home, and neither do I." He rose and advanced upon her, his eyes locked on hers as in the gaze of mortal enemies. "You have a mad vision of happiness beyond the seas, and I have this black, burned, killing-field of a land that sickens me whenever I think of it."

She looked into the brilliance of his eyes and remembered that it was said he'd shed tears upon seeing what Hardin's armies had done to Altea. She hadn't believed it, for it was so unlike him to cry. So very unlike him...

"When I first saw you in the castle of Aurelis, you seemed like one set apart from humans," he said as he ran a finger across her lips. "I thought you looked like the blessed messengers of the dead, the ones who escort the souls of heroes to the realm of the gods."

His fingers traced down the line of her jaw to her collar, then parted the gold-encrusted fabric to expose her throat to the air.

"Damn it all, Nyna, but I was right. You've led so many heroes to their deaths that I can't count them any longer."

She'd wondered before if his heart hadn't frozen at some point in the war, in the Temple of the Ice Dragons or elsewhere. As he pressed his mouth to her bared shoulder with enough force to bruise, she knew it wasn't the case.

-x-

"I beg your pardon, King Jesse, but my servant is wearied from the journey and needs some rest."

Though Timur's dark-green eyes were hazy with need for sleep, Nyna felt as though some hot and oppressive hand rested upon her own head. The air in the dining hall of Jesse's palace- a fortress, really, and a well-used fortress at that- was stifling for all that the sun had already gone down in a blaze of scarlet, gold, and deepest blue. Jesse raised a languid hand to dismiss her; the other hand was clenched around an emerald-studded cup of some potent clear beverage.

"Jenny'll show you to our guest room, Miss Niena. It's not too pretty, 'cause we don't get a lot of fine ladies around here, but we took care of the roaches. Well, most of 'em."

"Thank you, Your Highness." She curtsied, smiling to herself at the harmless madness of this comical court. She turned away- here, it seemed, there was no need to scuttle away backwards from the sovereign- but Jesse called out to her once more.

"Say, Niena."

"Your Highness?"

"You're from Archanea... did you ever meet a girl called Est? Pretty little thing with short hair, rode a pegasus."

The former queen of Archanea made use of two decades of court training as she did her best to conceal any shock of recognition... and any flicker of guilt.

"No, I've never heard the name," she said, and as the lies crossed her lips, Nyna wondered if any of her hosts had lied about Sirius.

"Oh. Too bad." Disappointment was writ plain across Jesse's open face. "She was a fine kid. I'm hoping she's still alive, after the troubles overseas."

Nyna did not know what she might possibly say without incriminating herself, and was saved only when Jenny escorted her from Jesse's hall.

**To Be Continued...**

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A/N: I hope nobody minds some unrequited Jesse/Est. If anyone does mind, color me surprised. If more than two people know who Jesse even is, color me surprised.

Anyway, in this installment Nyna marries Marth just so nobody can squawk about legalities when she hands him her kingdom and bails. If this bothers you, don't worry, the "marriage" doesn't last very long. Also, the release of FE12 (Heroes of Light and Shadow), a reboot of FE3, has thrown all kind of continuity wrenches into canon. I am mostly ignoring them, but since canon is now All Jacked Up, I feel less guilt about taking some liberties in this story.


	3. What The Body Allows

**Dark Sun of Desire**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Warning: More Marth/Nyna. With an M rating. I cut this chapter in half so that anyone who decides to bail on this installment won't miss out on much of the plot. Also, if this is out of line with characterization as it currently stands in _Shin Monshou no Nazo_, I don't particularly care. I'm not entirely pleased with _Shin Monshou_, to put it mildly.

* * *

_Part Three: What The Body Allows_

"Is King Jesse fond of this... Est?" Nyna asked it only after Timur was sent off to sleep in the barracks with Jesse's garrison.

"Oh, I believe she made quite an impression on him," Jenny said, and she smiled so sweetly that Nyna felt a twist of horror. "Before the great war, this fortress belonged to brutal men, pirates and brigands. Est was held here for a time, and Jesse got himself captured trying to save her. Lady Cellica's party rescued them both."

She spoke modestly enough that no one might suspect that Jenny was, as Nyna had gathered, part of Cellica's victorious army. Nyna stared at Jenny and wondered at her aura of innocence, wondered if this "war" of the Valencian peoples was only a war in the sense that Jesse's household was a royal court.

In real wars, pretty young pegasus knights were blasted to pieces by their captors. In in real wars, renowned knights broke their oaths for the vain belief that taking a hundred lives was worth the damnation if they could save just one. Real wars took all human connections and ripped them, burned them, stained them, leaving hope and innocence and love itself unrecognizable. Nyna saw Jenny smile and almost hated the girl for being able to smile. For being able to love her scarred and inarticulate husband with such transparent devotion.

And she resented Jenny, Jesse and the rest of these people for reminding her, so very soon, of everything she yearned to escape.

_I thought I was slipping free of my past, and yet I've blundered into something else... something more... that I don't want to remember._

Her body was wearied to the point of physical pain, yet she stared at the moon-washed walls through the night and went through all her memories, deciding what to keep and what to leave behind.

-x-

She threw back her head and felt her hair cascading around her unclothed body. Nyna raked her nails across her bridegroom's chest, determined to fulfill every act Hardin ascribed to her when he called her deceitful, called her a faithless whore. She would bring to life every false vision of her whoring that Hardin recited for her, and it would at last be good in the eyes of the gods.

"When Hardin accused me of being your lover, I was stunned and afraid. Afraid for myself, afraid for you... but also I was glad. When he blamed you for turning my affections against him, I knew Camus was safe in my heart."

She watched his face darken with an anger that went far past his ability to give it words. Yet her cruelty, the verbal equivalent of her beloved thunder magic, had the desired effect. It blasted through his ice-and-marble facade to show the boy she'd known, the one who dreamed of punishing entire kingdoms to avenge their transgressions against him. And if he raged against her now for being a selfish bitch, raged against her for not being Caeda, she met him grief for grief as they locked together like the earth chained to the moon. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and terrifying, whatever this truly was- lovemaking, hate-making, lancing a boil across the heart to let a torrent of corrupt matter spill out. They were spiting one another, spiting the dead and the living alike as they desecrated whatever ideals of love they still carried in their souls.

-x-

Nyna was glad to escape Jesse and his people; their camaraderie galled her to the point that it was difficult to maintain her poise around Timur. And she must, of course, maintain her poise around the boy; the charade of lady and servant was all that remained of her identity. She was grateful to accept Jesse's gift of two flat-backed camels and still more glad to leave the towers of his fortress behind.

-x-

Asleep, he looked as young as he had when she'd first seen him, in the days before anyone realized what it would truly cost to beat back the darkness that covered the land. She traced her fingers over the seams cut into the tender skin of his right side, the streaks of livid scar tissue. She knew those wounds intimately; she'd made repeated attempts to heal them, to stem the terrible bleeding, while half-blinded by tears that were only partly for Marth. Nyna ran her tongue against the scars, tasting salt as she remembered the blood, remembered what she had believed to be Camus's final act upon the earth.

Marth was not as soundly asleep as she thought; even as her lips grazed his skin, she felt his fingers rake through the hair at the back of her head. He twined and knotted her hair so thoroughly that she was forced to raise her head and look directly at him.

"I thought for certain Camus had killed me; when he pulled the head of his lance free, I didn't believe I could possibly be healed. I didn't know until later, hours later, that my last desperate strike at him was thought to be a killing blow. None of it made any sense to me, and none of it had any meaning."

He spoke in the low murmur of a lover, but his eyes were as cold as she had ever seen them. She looked away from his eyes, stared instead at the silver glow the moonlight cast upon his face.

"I remember you holding me, telling me I couldn't possibly die, that there was too much left to be done." His recitation, almost toneless in its dispassion, disturbed her, as she could _hear_ the void where feeling ought to be. She wondered if he had merely bottled everything up within him, or if the sparks of feeling in his heart could be lit and quenched as easily as any candle. "I hated you then as much as I had ever hated anyone. With the fate of an entire continent at stake, you sent me off to resolve your little love affair. You sent me into a trap, put me up against the most skilled warrior alive, and had the graceless _nerve_ to chastise me for getting myself killed."

"You survived." Her eyes were beginning to water from the pain in her scalp.

"As did he. As did you." He released his grip on her hair, and Nyna breathed deeply as the curls tumbled freely around her. "Aren't we fortunate, to be spared death to commit our mistakes again and again?"

Nyna parted her lips in anticipation of another mistake. She was no longer certain which of them was pulling the other down as they sank together, the way the kraken and the whale descend into the black depths of the sea.

-x-

She hadn't realized one could be seasick in the middle of the desert; the small Valencian camel with its endearing funny face had an equally odd gait. It pitched and rolled as it traversed the dunes and took Nyna with it. She poured all her conscious attention into staying erect in the saddle, in keeping her eyes fixed upon the horizon line.

"Are you well, mistress?"

Timur sounded as though he'd taken in a lungful of sand.

"Never better," she replied. "Just a little longer... how vast can a desert be, in this small island?"

**To be continued...**


	4. Sing, Little Birdie

**Dark Sun of Desire**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

Back into the land of T-ratings. For now, anyway.

* * *

_Part Four: Sing, Little Birdie_

The rippling sands of the Valencian desert ended as abruptly as though some giant had thrown down a verdant carpet on the earth. Timur helped Nyna down from her camel, and it seemed she felt the life of the ground echo with each step upon the vegetation.

"The earth is good," she said, not knowing entirely why she said those words. The brilliant greens of beryl and jade, broken by small explosions of scarlet, deep pink, and flaming orange, were a pleasure to the eyes. The air, so silent in the desert, was filled now with bird-song and the chirruping of frogs. Two butterflies landed on Timur's shoulder, and the boy walked on for some time unaware that he carried them as passengers.

Shortly after their exit from the desert, they came across a small shrine, half-hidden by the vines that twined around it. The pale stone figure had been much weathered, but it seemed to be of a female saint or goddess, robed and crowned. Something about the statue struck Nyna as familiar, though she could not place it.

-x-

In Nyna's fantasies, she would leave Archanea the morning after her marriage. Her business as she saw it was done, and the kingdom had no further need of her. The Council of bishops sought to differ with her; with the marriage consummated, Nyna was obliged to wait until it was certain she had not conceived a possible heir before she was allowed to depart. Such was the tradition with newly-widowed queens and other irregular persons, and Nyna was nothing if not an irregularity at her own court.

The first day, the second, she chafed at the restrictions. Every courtesy shown to her heightened the irritation- she was, she felt, a most honored prisoner of state, a thoroughly tiresome place to find herself in again. On the third day, as Nyna's attendants dressed her and set her hair, she felt a strange calm settle over not only her heart but her limbs. She looked back at herself, at the familiar shell of gilding and powder she inhabited, and decided she could live with that facade a while longer.

_I thought you looked like the blessed messengers of the dead..._

She was not of this place. Her destiny had already broken open; the bishops could delay her, but they could not stop her.

-x-

"The right fork of this road will take us to the capital, Mistress. If we keep straight, we will be instead at a port city. It will be two days from here, but many days more to the capital."

"Let us continue on this path, Timur. A port city sounds... charming."

She had no great wish to see the capital of this kingdom at the present time. Besides... a port city would be a good place for news and rumors. Perhaps this Port of Sofia would have tidings of a masked knight by the name of Sirius.

-x-

Linde visited daily; the knowledge that the young sage loved her- as a sister and a confidante as well as a sovereign- should perhaps have bent Nyna's will. It did not. She looked into Linde's shining brown eyes and felt as though a polished stone lay in her breast in place of a heart.

As for the state of her marriage... she and Marth took their meals together, and she entertained herself with books while he dealt with guests and councilors, and it was all rather pleasant in its own way. At the stroke of ten, they would bid one another good-night with a kiss upon the cheek, and would see no more of one another until breakfast. Nyna did not ever wonder what her nominal husband did during their nights apart; what he did with himself was none of her concern and was very likely dull in any event. As for what _did_ concern her, the delay made for an extended farewell to Millennium Court and all of its ghosts- her father, her mother, her teachers... and the restless shade of Artemis.

"I wonder if she can see me now," Nyna said to Linde, as they stood beneath a portrait of the princess whose broken heart had placed a curse upon Nyna's bloodline.

"I don't think so," Linde replied. "When Lord Marth restored the Fire Emblem to its true state, I think he lifted the curse on it... and with that, Artemis should be able to find some peace among the spirits."

Nyna stared at the texture of the paint that formed the image of her ancestress. She heard the words that Linde spoke, but they no longer made sense in her heart. Tokens that carried a dire curse and enchanted shields that placed a holy seal upon evil sounded like things from children's tales, and Nyna had lived with those tales and the spell they wove entirely too long. Soon, soon, she would be in a place that had never heard of the Fire Emblem, or the Curse of Princess Artemis, or the rest of the threads that formed the shroud of her living death as the Queen of Archanea.

-x-

Color. So much color.

Houses with walls of bright blue and orange under roofs of red tile. Inns three stories high, built of rose or salmon stucco, with banners at every corner. City walls painted with brilliant murals, art whose style screamed to Nyna of its foreign nature... or, rather, her foreign nature.

She paused in the middle of the stone-paved street just to let the hundreds of colors, the sound of a dozen dialects, wash over her.

"Careful, Mistress!"

Timur took her by the arm and pulled her from the path of a four-wheeled cart laden with yellow fruit.

"Thank you, Timur. I was... overcome... by this place."

It would not do, after all, to meet her end beneath a fruit cart. Though if she had been crushed beneath its wheels now, here in this beautiful riot of a city, Nyna might have died laughing.

-x-

"This marriage is good for Queen Nyna," she heard them whisper.

It was, in a sense. Her mind was able now to focus on a single goal. She drew Linde into her plans for escape, made the girl her conspirator. Desire to see her queen happy overcame Linde's wish to see Nyna on the throne of her forebears; the girl had a romantic streak that now proved useful. Linde would be there to speak for Nyna when Nyna herself was gone.

Nyna paced through the halls of Millennium Court, her steps slowed by heavy embroidered robes. She did not take her shoes off and run, now. She did not drink herself dizzy, nor did she laugh at the wrong moments, cry at the wrong moments. Yes, this marriage was good for her. Queen Nyna was a new woman. Again.

She counted the days.

**To be continued...**


	5. The Child Nearly Born

**Dark Sun of Desire**

I do not own _Fire Emblem_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_Part Five: The Child Nearly Born_

They took lodging in one of the pink-stucco inns near the harbor. Nyna sent Timur down to the docks each day to converse with merchants and mariners; he fit in easily there, as she'd found him on the docks in western Grust. Now Timur might get some use out of the five tongues he supposedly knew. Nyna meanwhile browsed the shops and market-stalls of Port Sofia, looking not for wares or services but for someone who could direct her to a man who called himself Sirius.

She found no trace of him. Days bled into weeks, weeks into months, and her supply of gold dwindled. She'd been too generous, perhaps, but she'd hoped so keenly that gold would loosen tongues. She still had a few gems she might sell off, trifles that would not arouse suspicion in the marketplace, but their situation could not last indefinitely.

"We will have to find work, Timur," she said one morning over their breakfast of pulpy red fruit and eggs with green-speckled shells.

"Work, Mistress Niena?" The boy put on his most innocent face.

"Yes, Timur. Either that, or we must take more humble lodgings." The grand inn with its colonnade, mosaic floors, and well-set table had been another mistake; she should not have turned so instinctively toward luxury.

Nyna- or Niena, as she had begun to think of herself- wondered what she might possibly do. Needlework? Should she buy herself a little painted cart and sell fruit? Offer herself as a teacher, a governess, to some well-to-do family?

Perhaps she should go to one of the city temples; she had, of course, once been a healer. Niena wondered if that power was even still with her. She wondered if the gods of Valencia could find any use in her.

-x-

Thirty days. Thirty-two, thirty-three. Thirty-seven. Forty, forty-one. As the confinement of her marriage progressed, Nyna noticed a subtle change in Marth's manner toward her. Nyna expected that Marth would be eager to see the last of her, that he was as anxious to release her as she was to fly free of him and his world. Instead, it seemed that he began to make excuses to spend more time with her. He asked her to come to the temple with him on holy days, when she would have otherwise feigned illness. He "accidentally" would encounter her when she was prowling the castle with Linde, forcing Linde to withdraw gracefully while the king escorted his queen back to her chambers.

Nyna realized to her dismay that Marth was- stubbornly, unfailingly- trying to save her.

Her frustrations flowed over when he broke their unspoken agreement and did not withdraw from her apartments when the bells chimed ten o'clock.

"Why do you even bother with me?"

His kindness sickened her; surely he could see that. What did it benefit him to spend his spare hours with her when his beloved Caeda hovered just out of sight, awaiting her turn at his side?

"You mean something to the world, Nyna. Even now..."

He picked up the hairbrush she had thrown in his direction, then approached her, the ivory brush resting his his open palm as a peace offering. She turned her back on him, refused to look at him even when she felt his other hand upon her waist and his breath at her ear.

"They pray for you, Nyna. All our world prays for you, not because they must but because they remember when your name was a beacon of hope in the darkness."

_That was you. That was all you_. So she seethed inwardly, and she contemplated stepping on his foot. Instead, she said something else entirely.

"Do you pray for me?"

"Yes. Yes, of course I do. Nyna..." She looked at the patterns in the carpet and so did not see his face, but she heard the sharp note of surprise in his voice. "Nyna... when I was angered, your words gave me pause. When I looked across the field and saw enemies, you... you caused me to look again and see men. I'd forgotten that, but I've looked back on it now and remembered..."

She stared at the pomegranates on the carpet with all the force she could muster. She did not want his voice pulling her back to the past.

"Nyna, you _were_ that beacon in the darkness."

"And that made the difference? It tipped the scales of Fate in favor of light?"

"It was enough."

His grip around her waist tightened ever so slightly. Nyna's head inclined until her cheek rested against the cool damask of his tunic.

"And this is enough to redeem all of my sins?"

He really had no idea, she thought. None at all.

-x-

On the tenth day of the month, the Valencian queen came and received petitions from her people in the city square. Niena learned of this when she saw decorations being set up in the square, and she joined the line of petitioners the following day.

She stood in the line for three hours and more as the warm sun rose toward the zenith. Timur brought her water twice as Niena waited her turn. She heard some of the petitions of those ahead of her- Holy Queen, my crops have spoiled and I cannot pay my taxes. Holy Queen, my only son died in the famine and there is no one to care for me as my sight fails. Holy Queen, my brother was arrested as a bandit and I wish to clear his name.

Then Niena found herself at the head of the line, blinking upward at the Holy Queen of Sofia and Rigel. Queen Cellica proved a woman just past the threshold of girlhood, a vision in copper and gold and all the rich colors of autumn. She knew the queen was said to be young and pretty, but Niena was not expecting Cellica to possess such an aura of grace. She was not prepared for that, and not prepared either for the feeling that lit in her heart upon seeing that the queen was heavy with child. Niena stumbled forward, went upon her knees as would any supplicant.

"Holy Queen, I have traveled from the east, from Archanea, to seek a man named Sirius. He saved my life twice over, and I am in his debt."

"I do not know the name," said the young queen, in a voice sweet and musical, "but describe him for me, if you would."

Niena explained that her man was tall, far taller than the average man, and was fair of face and hair though his eyes were dark. She said that he walked with the gait of a soldier and handled both sword and lance with unmatched skill. Niena wished that she were not on her knees, that she was looking up into the young queen's face to see if any gleam of recognition did appear there.

"If we can find your Sirius, I will reunite him with you," said the Holy Queen. Her voice carried a strain of determination, of optimism, that Niena found horribly familiar.

Niena whispered her thanks to Cellica; she blessed the child in Cellica's belly and hoped her words didn't carry the force of a curse.

**To Be Continued...**

**

* * *

**Author's Note: I adore Cellica.


End file.
